Straight to Steemit Novel: Sojourn: Chapter 6 - The Cave

Preamble

This is the sixth chapter in my straight to Steemit Novel Project.

Past Entries
Chapter 1 - The Road.
Chapter 2 - The Evening Road.
Chapter 3 - The Roadside
Chapter 4 - The Hotel
Chapter 5 - Destination

A new chapter will be added in six days time. The cover image may change from week to week. (No new cover this week!) All images used in this project will be captured by myself as original photographs.

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Chapter 6 - The Cave

There was a walk of about fifteen minutes, steadily downhill until the door that had flickered to life in prior room became visible before us. It was unclear just how far underground we had traveled. Roger was coping well and his gait didn’t look like a limp after a while. He led the way quite cheerily, setting the pace for everyone that followed.

The guards at the door stiffened as the group approached. They nodded. The woman’s voice emerged from the hidden speakers once more, echoing throughout the hollow spaces. “Allow them to enter.”

A complicated looking set of buttons was pressed by each guard, and they counted down from five, pressing another sequence of buttons as they did this process. When they reached zero, there was the hiss of air, and cold air from the tunnel we had traveled through rushed to fill the space, now opened.

It was dark within, properly dark. Roger demonstrated that the helmets had a groove, perfectly suited to fit the flashlights from the vests we had all been given. We would need light to see where we were going. The guards said not a word as we passed them, walking into the darkness.

“Good luck,” the Woman’s voice, again “You’re our only hope now.” Once we had all entered the space beyond the door, it began to close behind us.

Meredith was the first to speak in the darkness. “Let’s see what we can find.” She still carried a certain amount of disdain for the situation in her voice, but her body language appeared more positive, as Malcom helped her ensure the flashlight was securely strapped into her helmet. She thanked him, and turned the light on immediately, briefly blinding him.

I found that bit amusing. “Show business!” I joked, punching him in the arm a little harder than what would be considered friendly. That part was intentional. He rubbed his arm in the spot I had made contact. I had decided that would be his new nickname.

Violet hadn’t said a word. Roger seemed to be taking the role of leader onboard, and with his firearms training, and the lack of information provided about what we were bound to encounter in the underground ruin or construct or whatever it was, gave me the confidence to believe that the man with the gun should be the man in the front.

I flicked the thermal camera out of the belt, and surveyed the area. I first passed it over the group, to get a feel of what body heat signatures would look like in the underground, chilly air. Orange, mostly, with darker, red torsos. Colder extremities, consistent with how I myself perceived the chill in the air. I swung the camera toward the darkness and saw nothing register on the screen.

“I’m going to need that thermal camera by my side”, Roger spoke, planning to organise the group. I got the feeling he hadn’t just been a firearms instructor. I tried my best to avoid responding in a military manner. I failed. “Roger that.” Violet chuckled somewhere behind me.

If you could describe the space we were in, it would best be closest to atrium. There was quite some distance between the floor and the roof of the cave, so much so that the flashlights had a hard time illuminating the jagged rock overhead. This was in contrast to smooth, almost polished rock walls, which encased us in a space about twenty metres squared.

Behind us, the technological doorway through which we had entered. Before us, smooth rock turned to jagged, with an opening in the rock wide enough for each person to shuffle through sideways. Malcom shined his torch light into the opening. “It looks pretty sharp on the edges, we should be careful as we go through.” He did just that, shuffling in slowly with his left foot leading.

He had taken maybe three steps into the space before advising us of the discovery he had made. “This doesn’t go anywhere!” He shuffled back out. Considering the fact that people had gotten lost in this space I found that hard to believe. He looked utterly miserable at this when he emerged. “They’ve brought us down here to die!”

Violet gave the voice of reason a try. “People got lost down here, you twit.”
“It can’t be a dead end,” I added, with a pause, before dramatically adding “If it was, there would be bodies!” I accentuated the end of the last word, forcing a patronising tone in my voice. Violet picked up on this and added; “Plus, if there was bodies here, it would stink.”

“They’re right, you know,” Roger this time; and it appeared as though we had delivered reason to the man who didn’t need it. “It can’t be a dead end.”

Meredith approached the gap in the stone where moments ago Malcom had believed we were all doomed. Her voice was muffled as she spoke into the gap. “There’s an opening in the rock to the side, I think we can all squeeze through.” She slithered into the gap, and then vanished away to the left.

“You’ve got to shuffle in sideways, then move forward.” Her voice was barely perceptible through the gap in the rock. “Except, the opposite direction than you just did.” Malcom followed.

I shuffled in after him, sucking in my breath. The clearance between the rock walls was incredibly claustrophobic, and it wasn’t exactly what you’d describe as cozy. The jagged rocks at the edges threateningly bade for blood, and if you were running at the gap, they would do some serious damage. I ran a finger against one of the edges to test its sharpness, and this made me suck my breath in further. I would not want to cut myself down here.

It was very dark in the next chamber, and what artificial light was seeping through the door from the prior room did not make a dent in the darkness. We had our helmet mounted lights, and that was it. Roger and Violet followed and we all found a corner to the space. It wasn’t too large. The rocks here were not smooth like the previous area, and the only features were an opening in the wall of the cave, through which water could be heard dripping.

It echoed as it dripped, and sounded like a hammer. There was no sound of trickling, which suggested that the water was flowing downward, or simply being absorbed by the rock. There was a definite dampness to the air, owing to being however far underground it was that we were. I tested the thermal camera on the tunnel, and there was nothing, just a cold patch were presumably, the water was dripping from.

Roger took the lead, entering the gap in the stone. “The tunnel curves. Watch your steps, uneven underfoot.” He was efficient in his use of words, clear and concise. Unlike how I tended to be. I followed closely behind him, using the thermal camera as though I was Sigourney Weaver in one of the Alien films scanning for the enemy.

At least, that’s how I rationalised the situation in my mind. I had no idea what we were in for, and decided to allow myself that pretending I was some sort of mercenary would be infinitely more fun (if not misleading) to everyone in the group. With this thought, I had a question for Roger. “Do you have military experience?” He didn’t answer, but he nodded. I could tell because the beam of light projecting from his helmet dipped down, then came back up, revealing a bright patch of rock, presumably limestone in among the dark mineralisation that seemed to make up most of the cave structure.

There wasn’t much of a chance to make conversation with the man. He seemed tense and on edge, and was very clearly treating the expedition as a military exercise. We rounded a corner, and behind us, I could hear Malcom swearing.

“Fuck, I think I rolled my ankle!”
“I told you to watch your step.” Roger seemed to have no sympathy.
“You can still walk.” Meredith had moved to help Malcom along.

“We shouldn’t stop here,” Violet motioned to the ceiling, that bright vein of limestone the focus of her torchlight. “That’s limestone, that’s water...”Another drip “Not a great recipe for a place to stop and chat about injuries.”

I didn’t know that she knew about Geology. “Did you do some study on Geology through pharmacy?” I asked, continuing to move through the tunnel with Roger, disappointingly seeing no change on the thermal imaging camera. “Yeah.”

Meredith mused out loud “Sticks and stones.” Needles for pharmacy and stones to… what? Break bones, hurt people? I wasn’t sure where she was going with the thought.

“That wasn’t a stone!” Malcom exclaimed.
“Well it didn’t break your bones, so keep moving.” Violet had a commanding allure in her voice that I hadn’t heard before. It was encouraging.

Malcom inhaled sharply, apparently on each and every step he took, even those steps that were not on the ankle that he alleged that he had rolled. I could hear Meredith labouring lightly alongside him as she helped him put less weight on the leg. While Malcom wasn’t a large individual, Meredith’s slender frame was about two thirds of his size.

Violet made no move to help, it was clear she didn’t think it was an injury of any real consequence. “Keep it moving for the time being, we’ll see if we can strap it once we’re out of this part of the tunnel.”

We made slow progress forward, surveying the rocky stalagmites that seemed to grow up from the floor, jutting into spiraled forms. Definitely not the sort of thing you would want to slip onto. The rock formations gradually smoothed, and there was an opening above a natural stair case. Roger moved to the side, motioning to the thermal camera.

“Check it.”
I checked. There was no difference in temperature beyond the lens of the camera, however there was a light, cold breeze that flowed outward from the space. It had an unspecific stench to it, the closest thing I could think of was mushrooms. “Nothing.”

“Proceed.” I climbed the first step of the rock formation toward the opening.
“Watch your head.” Violet, always looking out for me. The next step was more cautious, as I ducked with my neck, not lowering my head effectively enough. The helmet absorbed the blow of third step. I had learnt my lesson. I ducked with my back, leaning forward into the crevasse.

“Open space!” I clambered through the opening and relished the chance to stretch. Flexibility certainly wasn’t my strong point. I heard the others come through behind me as I surveyed the newest iteration of absolute darkness with the thermal camera. Again, nothing. I didn’t expect to see anything, but I had hoped that there would at the very least be something.

The others followed through and joined me. It was quickly apparent that the new space was much larger than the last, as the flashlight beams failed to reach any solid walls. I heard rustling from where Malcom was located. He had what looked to be a square contraption of some sort. “Laser rangefinder,” he remarked, before advising everyone to look away.

A red dot instantly illuminated a distant rock formation. The laser light diffused slightly, and appeared to diffuse through the rock. It was a piece of quartz, and for a moment, the space beyond the cave was bathed in a red laser glow. “I think we’ve all got these things,” Malcom remarked, and he was correct. Meredith had added a laser dot to the quartz formation in the middle of the room, and this helped to illuminate the chamber further.

The quartz formation looked like an icicle with a case of mistaken identity. It jutted out of the solid rock floor, and had multi-faceted textures, both within and without the mineral. It had a beautiful, translucent nature to it, and in the laser light, could be mistaken for a Ruby.

A ruby that cast a glow toward the rear of the chamber, and there was a perceptible shift in the gradient leading further downhill. The ground here was smoother, without the emerging stalactites from the earlier tunnel.

There was a beep. “This thing states 300 metres to that point,” I didn’t think that Malcom knew what metres were, and it sounded odd to have his American accent talk of the metric system. “Not too far.”

The thermal camera still showed nothing new in the immediate area. It seemed to only have an effective range of about thirty metres.

Malcom struggled to sit. “Can we please see to this ankle now?” Violet rummaged for some tape, to help stabilise the joint. “While they play patient and nurse, let’s explore a little.” Roger seemed to have a constant sense of urgency about this task that we were given, and I liked it.

The laser lights remained focused on the quartz that was in the distance. Meredith lead the way, and we surveyed the rock wall from where the tunnel that led to the chamber burrowed back toward the surface.

It was dark. It was unremarkable. The quartz was the most interesting thing in the area. “Can we go check out the quartz?” I wanted to examine it more closely, maybe take a photograph of the laser light seeming to bleed through the mineral. “Its the only interesting thing here.”

I moved toward the quartz, eager to see what lay beyond. Three hundred metres does not seem like a huge walk on an ordinary day where the sun is shining. When you’re heading towards something that looks almost magical, it seems like it is only a few steps.

I could barely hear Meredith’s footsteps, Roger; on the other hand, shuffled along the stone, stamping out each and every footfall he made. It didn’t echo, but it felt as though it should have. We approached the quartz, and examined it closer.

“Don’t touch anything!” Roger suddenly gave a warning, even though there was no apparent or immediate danger present. Visions in my mind went instantly to over the top images of a person become possessed by merely touching the quartz, and it seemed unlikely. When it is dark, my mind likes to make up the existence of things that aren’t really there to fill the void. This was no different.

“Its beautiful.”
“It is just a rock.”

“Mineral,” Violet corrected. She had apparently seen to Malcom and had joined the group. The chamber went dark. Behind me, I could hear that Malcom had gotten up, and the laser had lost its focus on the quartz. Under the torchlight, and the relative darkness, it no longer looked like a Ruby.

“Are we all going to stand around this thing like it is some sort of monolith from fiction?” Meredith asked the question, evoking memories of 2001: A Space Odyssey. “We should explore further down,” Roger stopped to pause, as Malcom limped towards the group. He was lighting the way before him with the torch and the laser rangefinder. He clearly didn’t want to injure his lower body again. “No signs of anybody yet, not even foot prints, or shreds of cloth on rock, we should have seen some evidence that people were here.”

I looked back down at the thermal camera’s display, pointing it down the hill. A red blip appeared on its screen. “There will be.”